Escape: A Stepbrother Romance (28 page)

I put my arm around her and she rested her head on my shoulder. We didn’t speak for at least thirty minutes. She just stared at the gravestone. There were tears dripping down her cheeks onto my shoulder, but she wasn’t bawling her eyes out. A part of her must of been relieved. The energy required to concoct a fantasy that surrounds you so completely must have left her feeling drained all the time. Being able to finally bring down those barriers and let reality in would in some way be a relief.

“How did you know?” Vicky asked, not lifting her head from my shoulder.

Her voice was soft and didn’t carry any anger like I’d expected. Gemma had warned me that Vicky might take her anger out on me, but I had to take the risk. She might forever associate me with the sadness of her mother’s death, but it was something I had to do.

“Did you ever see a man hanging around your house over the last couple of months? Or see anyone follow you when you left?”

Vicky shook her head. “No, I don’t remember seeing anyone in particular.”

“I did. He followed us to the pub one day and I saw him hanging around the house a few times. I thought he was following me and even wondered if he was working for Naomi. She was sending me crazy messages and it wouldn’t have been beyond the realms of possibility for her to hire an investigator to track me down. Anyway, I confronted him one day and he told me about your mom.”

“Who was he?”

“Did you ever go to the trial?”

“What trial?”

“The trial for the man driving the car that hit your mom’s.”

“No, I didn’t go. Dad wouldn’t let me and by the time the trial started I had been shipped off to boarding school anyway.”

“The man who hit your mom’s car was called Patrick McDade. As you know, he was sending a text message while driving and that caused him to hit your mom’s car. He went to prison after being convicted of manslaughter. He was given a five-year sentence, but I guess he got out early.”

“And that was the man hanging around the house?” Vicky asked. She sat up now and pulled a tissue out of her purse to dry her eyes and cheeks. She let go of my hand for a few moments to stretch out her fingers, but then held it again.

“Yes. He looked like a wreck at first, because while he was in prison his wife left him and took the kids. I guess he had no money, no clothes, nothing. Not that I feel sorry for him given what he did. Anyway, I guess he got himself back on his feet, because when I found him he had a secondhand car. He’s working his way back up and wants to help you out financially now.”

“I hope you told him where he can shove his guilt money,” Vicky said tersely.

I laughed, thankful for the slight break in the tension. “Yes, I made it clear you didn’t want his money.”

Silence fell between us again. I could see Vicky working through everything in her head. It was one thing to realize her mother was dead, but she was no doubt coming to terms with other issues as well.

“You’re going to be okay,” I said. “You’re not crazy. You had a hard time dealing with what happened to your mom, so you created a story in your mind.”

“That sounds pretty crazy to me. Why didn’t my dad sent me to a shrink the second I started talking about mom being alive?”

“He did. Kind of. Gemma filled me in on quite a few of the details. As I understand it, when your mom died you locked yourself in your room and wouldn’t speak to anyone. You were silent for about a week finally broke your silence to speak to Gemma. You told her you’d spoken to your mom and knew everything would be okay in the end. Obviously Gemma was a little freaked out so she told your father and he sent you to a grief counselor.”

“A therapist. I go to a therapist at the shopping precinct. That’s the other place where I speak to mom.”

I nodded. “You were quite clever about the whole thing. I guess a part of your brain knew you couldn’t talk about your mom being alive to people who knew she was dead, so for a long time you kept it to yourself. Gemma thinks that when you went to the therapist you spoke to him as normal, but in your brain you are having a conversation with your mom.”

“That’s why I could only speak to mom every two weeks,” Vicky said. “I could only speak to mom when I had an appointment with my therapist.”

“I think so. And I suspect your auntie is actually the receptionist who books the appointments for the therapist. I’m not sure why you came here sometimes though.”

“Sometimes I would get a call from my auntie to cancel or reschedule the appointment. I think I came to the graveyard to speak to Mom when I had urgent news or just didn’t want to miss the appointment. Christ, I really am crazy.”

“No, don’t say that. You’re not crazy. You went through a tough time and didn’t have anyone to support you. Gemma didn’t speak highly of your father at all. He shipped you off to boarding school soon after your mother died and that meant you were surrounded by people who didn’t know what happened. You were able to talk to your friends about your mom being alive and none of them were able to spot the signs.”

“But everyone I know must think I’m insane,” Vicky said. “Gemma obviously knows and I’m sure a lot of other people do as well.”

“Not many,” I said. “Gemma assumed the therapy had worked and only found out relatively recently that you thought your mom was still alive. Like I said, you were careful who you spoke to. One day, you were cooking with Gemma and you made a completely offhand comment about speaking to your mom as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Gemma didn’t know what to do. She told your father, but he said it was for the therapist to deal with. Gemma even tried speaking to the therapist, but obviously he wouldn’t say anything for confidentiality reasons.”

“That’s something I suppose. I’m surprised Gemma didn’t tell me herself.”

“Don’t blame her. She was scared and worried that telling you might induce a mental breakdown or something.”

“I don’t blame her. She was always there for me. I remember most of it now. Mom didn’t die in the crash, but she arrived at hospital unconscious and was on life support for five days. Finally, my dad made the decision to turn the life support off. He didn’t have a choice, but I flew at him in a rage, pounding my fists into his chest. I don’t like or respect my father, but the look on his face as his I screamed at him while his wife died was a look of pure anguish that I didn’t remember. Gemma took me to one side and explained everything. She told me there was nothing the doctors could do and that my mom wouldn’t want to be kept alive like this. She was as upset as I was about the entire thing. We cried on each other’s shoulders as my mom passed.”

“Do you remember the funeral at all?” I asked.

Vicky nodded. “I remember it now, but I wasn’t speaking at the time so I never said goodbye. I just stared at the coffin as it was lowered into the ground.”

“Why don’t you do it now? Say your goodbyes to your mom. I’ll leave you alone and give you some privacy if you like.”

“No, stay. I can’t do this without you.”

We stood up and walked forward a few steps until we were standing in front of the gravestone. Vicky opened her mouth to speak a few times but ended up crying instead. Finally, she took a deep breath and composed herself, before looking back down at the gravestone and talking to her mom.

“Hi Mom,” she said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been here talking to you, but this is the first time I’ve done it knowing that you were gone. I’m sure you’ve been watching over me these last few years. You’ve seen me finish school and get accepted to the University of Cambridge. And you saw me meet this guy,” she said as she squeezed my hand tighter. “Although, come to think of it, I hope you weren’t looking over me
all
of the time.”

I smiled and squeezed her hand in return. “I like to think our loved ones have a sense of discretion.”

“You didn’t know my mother,” she said smiling, before turning back to face the gravestone. “I wish you had been able to meet him. He’s, well, he’s different from Dad. I think you’d have liked him though. He’s leaving in a few weeks, but that can’t be helped. I still cook all the time and I’m even developing my own recipes now. I think you’d be proud of me.”

“I
know
she’d be proud of you,” I said. “You’ve become a phenomenal woman.”

“This isn’t really goodbye,” Vicky said. “I’m still going to keep coming here and talking to you, except this time I won’t be doing it as a crazy person. Bye Mom.”

We walked home hand-in-hand, not realizing or perhaps not caring that Sheri or Vicky’s dad could drive by and see us at any moment.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said.

“About what?”

“Us. The future. I
could
come and study here. They give out visas to students like candy.”

“Do you mean it?” she asked excitedly. We stopped talking and she looked up at me wide-eyed and with a huge smile on her face.

“How can I resist that smile? We have to wait a year though. I meant what I said before about it being too late to start university this year.”

“That’s fine, the year will fly by. And you can visit a few times and I’ll go to California over Christmas and Easter when we get breaks.”

“It will still be difficult, but you’re right, time will fly by when I have you to think of.”

I felt delirious on the way home. I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing, but if this was the wrong thing then it felt so good I didn’t care. Everything was different now. This wasn’t just a summer fling. This was a relationship. It scared me less than I thought it would. Instead of panicking, all I wanted to do was get home and figure out what I had to do to go to an English university. I had friends who’d done it, so I knew it was possible and if there was any chance of making this work then I had to do it.

Gemma was waiting at the house when we got home. She looked terrified and I knew she expected Vicky to hate her. Gemma stood up as we came close and Vicky ran to her, throwing her arms around her for a hug. I walked inside and left the two of them to cry and talk things through.

I opened my laptop and started researching SAT prep courses. That was the first step in the journey to being with Vicky long-term. I’d never been so excited to take a exam.

The realization of Mum’s death didn’t send me into a downward spiral like I half expected it to. When I initially found out about her death almost three years ago I’d been so devastated that I blocked it out and created a new reality. This time things were different. I had Caiden beside me and I was ready to deal with the truth. I was ready to escape from that fiction and embrace life.

I told Caiden that it felt a bit like waking up from a dream, but that wasn’t entirely true. I had a friend at school food who suffered from depression for a number of years. After therapy and antidepressants she moved past the worst of it and one day I’d asked her what it’d been like being depressed for all those years. She explained that it was like having a constant fog clouding your brain. Even when you knew you should be, or were expected to be, happy your brain would feel heavy as if it were surrounded by a negative force stopping happy thoughts developing. I think my fantasy was a bit like that.

My life wasn’t perfect now—not by a long shot—but I did have the confidence to control things. Before, my life had been a daze. My father told me where to go and when and I followed his commands. Caiden had certainly changed things, but I still hadn’t felt free. Perhaps part of the fiction I created was a life where I didn’t have any free will at all.

I knew it was silly, but I felt under more pressure to please my mum now I knew she was dead than when I’d thought she was alive. Why hadn’t I tried to make her proud when I thought she was alive to see it? I guess that was all part of the fantasy. Life was easier when someone else made your decisions for you and as much as I hated those decisions, my dad had been more than happy to make them all for me.

Today was the last day he would be making my decisions. Today was the day of his wedding to Sheri and I decided to let him have a small victory. He insisted on having me by his side on the altar like a best man.

I’d refused at first and told him I didn’t want to be anywhere near that wedding. He didn’t know about my hatred for Sheri so he just assumed I didn’t like the idea of him getting remarried. In the end I relented. It was his wedding day and I would be off to university in little over a week.